Here's how contactless payments are putting you at risk of fraud

The contactless payments industry is in the midst of a meteoric rise, with over three billion contactless payments being made in Europe over the last 12 months, led by Poland, Spain and the UK.

However, a third of consumers still don't trust contactless payments and card fraud experts have now warned that pubs and restaurants are putting customers at risk by asking them to physically hand over the card during payment.

This goes against the UK Cards Association’s best practice guidelines, which advises that "the card or device should always stay in the customer’s hand (or on their person in the case of wearables), and both you [the retailer] and the customer should follow the terminal prompts."

This is something the majority of businesses and consumers are unaware of and fraud experts have called on the government to make the guideline a compulsory rule in order to protect consumers. Andrew Goodwill, founder at the Goodwill group, said: "The setup in many pubs and restaurants means that the card machine is situated behind the bar. Change is needed here, but it must first come from consumers.

"They should live by the rule that they take as much care of their card as you would with their wallet. Customers are being made vulnerable to having their card skimmed [fraudulently copied] if they hand their card over, so they should refuse when asked to do this."

James Daley, director at campaign group Fairer Finance added: "The risk of bad practice and fraud is much more prevalent in busy bars and small shops. Taking people’s tap and go cards away has become so common that people think that’s what they’re meant to do, when in fact they should be doing the opposite."